The earliest explorers identified the indigenous American peoples comfortably as far-flung east Asians. But as it became manifest that the Americas were a new and uncharted part of the world, new theories developed as to the origins of the “Indians”. The temptation was strong to find ancient connections, whether in the writings of classical antiquity or the mysteries of the Old Testament. Spanish observers were the first to begin cataloguing lists of practices by indigenous peoples that evoked Jewish customs. While the Spaniards turned away from the conclusion that Indians were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes, other colonial and old-world observers – including even Jews themselves – would continue to speculate on this topic through the end of the seventeenth century. Authors representing different religious traditions viewed the recovery of Judaic remnants in the New World as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, making possible the re-uniting of all the world’s Jews.

This magnificent eight-volume Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, was the second of the great polyglots. It was variously called the Antwerp or Plantin’s polyglot, or the Royal polyglot. It had a sizable impact on the English court and marked a new approach to biblical erudition and the study of oriental languages in England, and later in the British colonies as well.

A consideration of New World geography was by no means out of bounds for biblical commentators in the Renaissance. The discovery of “new” lands presented an opportunity to reconsider old knowledge. Benedictus Arias, called Montanus (1527-1598), was one of those speculating that the descendants of Ophir, a son of Noah, could have settled in Peru or further north on what is now the coast of California. Ideas about the nature of the western coast of North America were at this time still entirely speculative.

The Jesuit, José de Acosta’s careful study of the New World began with De natura Novi Orbis libro duo, published in Salamanca in 1588, which he expanded with further chapters in 1590 as The Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Acosta made extensive observations of the Native Americans he sought to convert to catholicism and noted, as others had, the numerous traits and customs they seemed to hold in common with the Jews. Acosta, however, authoritatively rejected the idea that the Indians were descended from the tribes of ancient Israel. Europeans would long continue to seek evidence of a Jewish identity in the New World population.

“The Hope of Israel,” published here in Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, endeavored to prove that the Lost Tribes of Israel were to be found in America. A prominent part of the text is the narrative of Aharon Levi, alias Antonio de Montezinos, who reported on contact with South American Indians who continued the practices of ancient Judaism. The work was also published in English and Latin, intended to promote the readmission of the Jews to England.

25. Thomas Thorowgood. Ievves in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that race. London : W[illiam]. H[unt]. for Thomas Slater, 1650.

Here, Thomas Thorowgood joins the argument, drawing much from the writings of Menasseh ben Israel. The possible rediscovery of “lost Jews” interested Thorowgood and others in a millennial context, and he also drew on the writings of the Puritan missionary John Eliot, who had spent time among the Indians at Roxbury, Massachusetts, outside Boston.

26. Hamon L'Estrange. Americans no Iewes, or Improbabilities that the Americans are of that race. London: W.[illiam] W.[ilson] for Henry Seile, 1652 [i.e., 1651].

L’Estrange’s reply to: Jewes in America by Thomas Thorowgood is a
noteworthy contribution to the debate about the Jewish origin of Americans. It attacks Menasseh ben Israel, Thorowgood and others, asserting that it is very unlikely that the Americans are of Jewish descent. However, he does not offer a convincing alternative explanation.

This reply to Spes Israelis, the Latin edition of The Hope of Israel by Manasseh ben Israel, is a major contribution to the debate on the Jewish origins of the Native Americans. Dedicated to the great Basel Hebraist, Johannes Buxtorf, and to Johann Heinrich Hottinger, the book firmly refutes Manasseh ben Israel’s view of the origin of the Americans, particularly Montesino’s description of their Jewish customs, which Manasseh included in his famous plea to Cromwell. (Our copy of the book is bound in a fragment of a music manuscript possibly dating to the fourteenth century).

Rocha provides extensive evidence that the rites, fashions, and ceremonies of the Indians of South America are in many ways akin to those of the Jews in both secular and sacred aspects of their life. He even cites Jewish names in use among the indigenous Peruvians.